[00:00:00] Daren: Before you buy a fancy smart watch, do you just read the marketing copy and buy the product? No, no, no, no. You dig around you Google them, check social media and even ask friends that might know about the product of service. What you’re looking for is real world reviews from real people. This is user generated content.

[00:00:24] UGC for short. Find out more about user generated content and why you should use it on this episode. On This Week In Marketing. Hey everyone. I’m Daren Lake and welcome to This Week In Marketing another podcast. by Metigy. In each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market and operate your small to medium enterprise better.

[00:00:46] And we do that by making them easy to digest short and concise because we’ve all got a business to run.

[00:00:56] In this four part series about content, we’ll walk you through how to create better content and engage more with your followers. I’ll be joined by Metigy’s own content coordinator. Joyce Cabanilla. Joyce possesses, the magical ability to pair analytics with online relationships and behaviors. She has worked for over five years as a marketing sales consultant and content curator in the fashion, travel and arts industries.

[00:01:19] All of this allows her to better understand and create educationally entertaining content for her clients and customers. So UGC user generated content is a thing. It sounds very buzzword industry type E like, but it is important and it shows that you have a community and it helps with online trust. So here’s what you’ll learn in this episode.

[00:01:43] One, what are the benefits of UGC for your business. Two, my own real world, examples that are not smart watch related three, how you can start right now by creating your own UGC. Let’s get into all the learnings with Joyce and me.

[00:01:58] User generated content, AKA UGC. What is it? And why is it so important joyce? 

[00:02:04] Joyce: There are two main reasons as to why it’s really important.

[00:02:06] Say for example, you have a consumer that hasn’t bought your stuff before. They will look at your website, they would see what you’re offering, but before they do that, they usually do some type of research on your product. So they would Google you and they would see what there is out there. And what reviews there are to say about, you know, your product.

[00:02:26] So user generated content is usually done by your customers or people who are interested in your business, and they create all of this content usually for free or by partnerships who knows to increase your brand awareness. So that’s like one of the ways for your brand to be exposed a little bit more.

[00:02:43] And through these UGC creates a community. So you create almost like a fan base, but a whole group of people. Who will continue maybe interacting with each other or who will assist you in making, you know, more content and reposts for your own website. So those are the two main reasons why UGC is really important.

[00:03:02] Daren: I’ll jump in and add that UGC it’s the the term sounds a bit technical sounds very robotic and, you know, uh, artificial intelligence, computer techy, but it it’s more of you first need to get to the point of PMF product market fit, where people actually want to make content for your brand, for your company, for your product or service.

[00:03:24] So you have to be that damn good that people wanna spend their time making making content and, you know, putting stuff online. That’s. All the stuff that you do. So we’ll talk about PMF in a future episode and it’s, it’s very messy product market fit, but when you get there, you know what it is, people are making content around your they’re making user generated content, but using that, you can also incorporate user generated content in the DNA of your brand. So let’s say people aren’t making content around. They’re not making user generated content. Think about when you post to get people to post up them using your product or using your service or all the different things that people will do around it. Or maybe they tag you or maybe, you know, you have merchandise and they take photos of the shirt.

[00:04:09] So. Thinking of marketing inside of your product, not marketing your product after you make it. And that’s actually where product market fit comes from. And that’s, it’s very technical way of, of going into it. But it requires a lot of long term thinking, which we won’t go into right now. We’re gonna keep this a bit top level.

[00:04:27] And the why it’s important is again, because you now will have the DNA of your product to service your whole brand. As in people immediately make a community out of it. Some products and services are easier than others don’t force it. This thing does take time and you want to get it right. You don’t wanna just put something out there that people don’t care about.

[00:04:47] because they won’t do it. And then you’ve wasted your time. So see what people are doing, see what your competitors are doing. Do a little bit of analysis on what’s working already within you. What can you incorporate from other people get inspired by them. Is there anything else to add? 

[00:05:00] Joyce: Yeah, I think there’s also like one other thing maybe that you could even have a head start with.

[00:05:06] Hashtags are quite a trending thing that a lot of small businesses do on there. Yeah. If you wanna find a community or if you want to gather a whole bunch of related content to your, your business, find a common ground and that hashtag on your social media websites to have your followers or whoever’s interested post and use because through that, you’d be able to navigate through free content by yourself. Pick out these things that relate to you and reshare, and that’s really important to have. 

[00:05:34] Daren: Thank you very much from Metigy. You’ve listened to This Week In Marketing again, I’m Daren and Metigy hopes. We helped you find more insights and tips into your business to find out more about Metigy and get a listener exclusive three month free trial.

[00:05:49] Visit us at Metigy.com/podcast. And while you’re there, go and check out some more episodes. If you like, what you heard. Please share a link to another business owner or marketer who you think could get something from this also to help us out. It would be great if you left a five star review on your favorite podcast app last, never miss another episode by following or subscribing to us on your favorite podcast player.

[00:06:12] See ya on the next episode.